People love stories. When you connect with your customers through stories, you evoke emotion, resonate with them on a personal level and leave an enormous impact. So, storytelling is a tremendously powerful marketing tool.
Your brand's story will motivate people to engage with your brand. And you want to tell your story across all customer touchpoints, including your packaging, labels, emails, websites and social media accounts.
Humans are also visual. You can convey meaning through color and imagery without saying a word. That's why carefully crafted labels and packaging are so essential to your brand's success.
Building your brand's identity takes time and requires consistency. At some point, your customers will instantly recognize your brand by the color, font style or type of imagery you use. When you incorporate all three of these elements in your packaging, you'll communicate what makes your brand unique as well as its values and mission.
Broadcast Your Purpose
According to Zeno, customers are four to six times more likely to purchase from a purpose-driven company. Likewise, they are five times more likely to recommend the company to friends and family.
Customers also say they feel more emotionally connected to brands that have a clear purpose-driven mission, which is essential for your brand’s success.
The well-known fast-food chain, Chipotle®, is a fantastic example. Its purpose is nutrition, sustainability and transparency. The brand even has "Our Values" and "Nutrition" on its menu. When you eat at Chipotle, you can instantly tell that the brand values sustainability because its packaging is aluminum foil, cardboard and paper.
By comparison, one of the company's primary competitors, Taco Bell®, focuses solely on price, which has worked for the company for decades. But research shows that many modern consumers prefer the purpose-driven business model and are willing to pay more for it.
So, make your purpose part of your brand story and showcase it on your labels and packaging.
Evoke Emotion
People make emotional purchasing choices. So, think of your brand as the emotion you want to evoke in your customers. Wherever customers encounter your brand, it's your chance to tell them your brand's story, make a connection and reinforce your brand messaging.
Colors also create emotion. Color is so powerful that it has a far-reaching impact on your mood, feelings and behaviors. We even linguistically use color to describe our emotions like "seeing red," "feeling blue" or "turning green with envy."
And that means your customers' buying choices are deeply influenced by the colors you choose for your branding, retail signs, graphics and marketing. Think about the type of emotion you want your customers to experience and use colors that support those feelings on your labels and packaging.
Create a Multi-Layered Experience
You can use custom packaging to give your customers a multi-layered experience. Include printed marketing collateral in your packaged components to provide consumers something tangible to hold onto for a while.
Marketing collateral can be a sticker, samples, a flyer or thank-you card to remind your customers of their experiences with your brand. Or you can include a loyalty points card in every package for your new customers.
One well-known skincare company includes recipe cards in its product boxes. The recipes show customers how to mix various facial products to create a powerful "smoothie" for their faces. The brand promotes brand interaction by encouraging its clients to share their smoothie recipes or before and after photos of their skin.
Build Brand Affinity With Personalized Packaging
Seattle-based soft drink company, Jones Soda Co.®, features images primarily submitted by consumers on its soda bottles. In 1999, the brand launched the online 'MyJones' campaign, which gave customers a chance to buy a 12-pack of customizable bottles with an image of their choice. Jones Soda created a memorable way to foster brand loyalty. Imagine how long its customers will keep those personalized sodas bottles as picture frames for their beloved memories. The Jones brand becomes synonymous with their customers' joy and nostalgia.
You can be inspired by this soda company's creativity and craft unique personalized packaging that allows your customers to get involved with your brand. Variable data printing technology makes the process easy and affordable.
Share Your Sustainable Packaging Story
Consumers are increasingly focused on how their purchases impact the environment. A report from Environment+Energy Leader says 74% of consumers are willing to pay premium prices for sustainable packaging. That's an overwhelming percentage of customers. The report also shows nearly 50% of consumers shy away from harmful packaging.
So, if sustainability is part of your brand's values, your brand will benefit enormously if your packaging tells your story. Your eco-friendly packaging will build an affinity with consumers and make it easier to make responsible choices.
In addition to reducing their carbon footprint and climate impact, consumers want to connect with brands that share their values. They see brands and purchases as an extension of their identity and beliefs.
Look at how Samsung repurposed its packaging. When you purchase a product from Samsung, you can turn your packaging into something useful. For example, buy a LED television. You can have the boxes repurposed into a cat tunnel, bookshelf, desk shelf, storage box, TV console, magazine rack, smartphone or tablet stand.
Samsung's creativity accomplishes several goals. It tells a story about the brand and builds brand affinity because customers will never forget a brand that turned their cardboard boxes into a bookshelf.
Your Takeaways
It's an exciting time for branding, marketing and packaging. Significant brands are leading by example and crafting unique, exciting and sustainable labels packaging that tells their story, highlights their purposes, and creates outstanding customer experiences. Do your research, and you'll be inspired by other brands putting these principles to work.
If you need help with conceptualizing, designing, and creating labels and packaging for your brand, please reach out to one of Taylor's experts. We've got a guru for you, no matter your industry or company size.
